=Obelisks.=--To the Twelfth Dynasty belongs the earliest =Obelisk= still in position; that of =Usertesen I=, in the necropolis of =Memphis=, its companion having fallen. For these developed forms of the monolithic _menhir_, regarded by the Egyptians as symbols of royalty and of the Sun-god, Ra, were placed in pairs, usually before the entrance of a temple. Their design was of great refinement, the taper being regulated very carefully in proportion to the width and height. The top was crowned with a small pyramid which in certain instances, at any rate, was capped with metal. The sides of the shaft were given a slight convex curve, or _entasis_, to offset the effect of concavity which they might have produced if rectilinear, and also to relieve the rigidity of the design. It is one of the instances which prove that the Egyptians understood and practised the principle of _asymmetry_, or deviation from strictly geometrical formality--a subject we shall study more fully in Hellenic and Gothic architecture. The two obelisks now known as =Cleopatra’s Needles=, one of which is on the Thames Embankment, London, the other in Central Park, New York, were removed from Heliopolis to Alexandria by the Romans. They were originally erected by Thothmes III of the Eighteenth Dynasty, whose half-sister, Queen Hatasu, numbered among her achievements the completion and erection of an obelisk, 100 feet high, in the short space of seven months. From this period of the Middle Empire survive the fragments of three temples. Amid the ruins of =Bubastis= have been found examples of the type of _clustered lotus_ columns, while portions of polygonal columns, discovered among the ruins of the Great Temple at Karnak, have been identified as belonging to a temple of the Twelfth Dynasty. The evidence which these remains afford of the fact that such columns were employed in actual construction as well as in rock-cut form, has been corroborated by the recent discovery of a sepulchral temple on the south side of the Temple of Deir-el-Bahri--to be mentioned later--of which it is the prototype. For the earlier was reached by steps that led up to a solid mass of masonry, which in the opinion of some authorities was crowned by a pyramid. It was surrounded by a peristyle, composed of an outer range of square piers and an inner one of octagonal columns. It is surmised, in fact, that during the Middle Empire, which was a period of great development in the arts of peace, many of the architectural problems were worked out in temples, afterwards destroyed, to make way for the superior developments that were achieved under the Second Theban Empire. SECOND THEBAN EMPIRE OR NEW EMPIRE